I have a few questions....
1. Can creatures have ....
a. Antlers or Horns?
b. Tusks, saber teeth or beaver teeth?
c. 2 or more heads?
d. Segmented bodies like insects, spiders and other invertebrates?
e. Photosynthetic creatures (animals that gather solar energy to make food like plants)?
f. Fur, Scales, Feathers, etc?
g. Venomous fangs, stingers, quills or barbs?
h. Arboreal creatures? (living in the trees)
i. Bioluminescent (like deep sea fish or fireflies)
j. Echolocation (like bats or dolphins)?
k. Different eyes such as compound fly eyes?
l. Special features like spider silk or chameleon skin?
2. Will other civilizations come and abduct your animals or ruin your tribal village if you are not up to the age yet?
3. Can you grow crops in tribal or city age?
4. Can vehicles do more than one thing? Such as an airplane that can land in the water (or go underwater) or cars that can take flight?
5. If you can make objects can you make a statue in the shape of your civ's creature?
6. Will there be mining? lumber chopping? or other such gathering natural resources during tribal or civ age?
7. Can you trade goods with other civs on your planet or other planets?
8. Will there be cold polar planets?
9. Will there be tarpits?
10. Can you use the same base species to make a tree of different species from it? Such as from a common amphibian ancestor created reptiles like crocodiles, turtles, lizards and snakes as well as dinosaurs to birds or mammal-like reptiles to mammals?
In response to these questions I PREDICT-
1a. Probably, eventually.
1b. Same as 1a
1c. It all depends on what a body part has to have to be considered a "head" you can have as many eyes and mouths you can afford, so I'm guessing you can have as many as you want.
1d. There will be no invertabrates (look at the 1st part of the interview on this site) but you can maniplulate the ribcage in size to incluude 2 different "sections".
1e. Probably not. Depending on what kind of mouth your animal has, it will be either a carnivore, omnivore, or herbivore.
1f. You will be able to customize the textures, but no one is sure how they will make that work yet.
1g. Wright said that there may not be "special features" in the game. Although it could change.
1h. I'm guessing not, unless the trees can get really big. I guess you could make their buildings LOOK like trees, so voila, you have arboreal critters.
1i. None of the seas I saw in the demo looked deep enough for that to happen. EDIT: BUT I did see a little jellyfish-looking thing in the demo that looked like it had a light on it's head, maybe that's bioluminescense..?
1j. I think creatures are able to evolve without eyes, but I'm not sure how Spore would make that work either.
1k. If it's not in the origional game, someone will make compound eyes themselves.
1l. Again, special features are not part of the game right now.
2. No, other creatures will not even advance to the UFO era until you get them really pissed off. Like blowing up one of their cities or blowing up their sun.
3. No idea. You might be able to if your animal is an herbivore.
4. Maybe if you put more than one type of movement device on one vehicle. (i.e. a car with wheels and a helicopter blade)
5. I'm sure if you work hard enough you can make a building shaped like your creature.
6. Not sure, we'll have to wait and see.
7. That's what 'Diplomacy' is all about. You can mkae other tribes not kill you by sending gifts.
8. Of course, you saw one if you've seen the GDC demo.
9. Maybe, on certain planets.
10. Umm.. I'm guessing no. EDIT: BUT you can choose to download similar species from the superdatabase to populate your planet. For example you start with a lizard and want snakes, crocs, turtlles, etc. Just find those other animals on the internet. I think the game will even do it for you if you like. Or maybe you'll just make those other animals you need. Who knows...
